Key words: Common Pronunciation Problems, Vietnamese learners, English Tóm tắt Bài này được viết nhằm mục đích nâng cao hiệu quả giảng dạy môn ngữ âm tiếng Anh cho bản thân.. In this pap
Trang 1SOM E C O M M O N PR O N U N CIA TIO N PR O B LE M S FA CIN G
V IETN A M ESE LEA RN ERS O F EN G LISH
Nguyen Tien Dung, MA
Faculty o f Foreign Languages, Ba Ria - Vung Tau University
Abstract
This paper was written fo r my improvement o f teaching English Pronunciation As a teacher o f the English language, I wish to learn more about the aspects that influence language learners when they learn how to speak English Therefore, I want to explore some common difficulties that Vietnamese students encounter when they learn to pronounce the English sounds
so that I can teach effectively and help them communicate more effectively The paper covers
a number o f frequent pronunciation difficulties that cause problems fo r Vietnamese learners o f the English language These difficulties include tense and lax vowels, consonant endings, stress and tones Ifin d this paper a useful reference source fo r both teachers and students, who want to improve their pronunciation o f English.
Key words: Common Pronunciation Problems, Vietnamese learners, English
Tóm tắt
Bài này được viết nhằm mục đích nâng cao hiệu quả giảng dạy môn ngữ âm tiếng Anh cho bản thân Là một giáo viên tiếng Anh, tôi muốn tìm hiểu thêm về các khía cạnh có ảnh hưởng đến người học ngôn ngữ khi họ học cách nói tiếng Anh Vì vậy, tôi muốn tìm ra một số khó khăn phổ biến mà sinh viên Việt Nam gặp phải khi học cách phát âm âm tiếng Anh để dạy và giúp người học giao tiếp hiệu quả hơn Bài viết này tập trung vào tìm hiểu những khó khăn thường gặp của học viên Việt Nam khi p hát âm tiếng Anh Những khó khăn này bao gồm các nguyên âm ngắn và nguyên âm dài, các phụ âm cuối, trọng âm và ngữ điệu Bài viết này là một nguồn tham khảo hữu ích cho cả giáo viên và sinh viên- những người muốn cải thiện ngữ âm tiếng Anh của mình.
Từ khóa: Các vấn đề ngữ âm thường gặp, học viên người Việt Nam, Tiếng Anh
Introduction
Learners of English often expect to be able
to speak that language like a native speaker
However, they encounter many factors to
gain their desire One of the common factors
that they find difficult is the pronunciation
of another sound system Learners find
that their mother tongue influences their
pronunciation of English Avery and Ehrich
argued that, “the native language affects both
the ability to produce English sounds and the ability to hear sounds” (Avery and Ehrich, XV) Pronunciation is most definitely the first aspect that people can notice in second language learners when they are speaking English Nation (2009) stated, “When some teachers and students complain about difficulties in speaking, they are often talking about pronunciation” (p.75) Pronunciation also plays a very important role in learning
46 TẬP SAN K H O A H Ọ C VÀ Đ À O TẠO
Trang 2a language, as Derwing and Munro (2005)
claimed that, “having good pronunciation
of the language can help in normal
communication, particularly intelligibility”
(as cited in Nation & Newton, 2009 p 75)
In this paper, I will talk about some common
difficulties in pronunciation that Vietnamese
speakers face when learning how to speak
English There are four major features that
can cause problems for them Firstly, the
complexity of tense and lax vowels in English
creates confusion for Vietnamese learners
Secondly, a variety of dialect differences and
consonant positions can cause confusion
Consonant clusters also lead Vietnamese
speakers to make mistakes when they speak
English Now, finally, the stress and tones in
the English language vary widely Where the
Vietnamese language is syllable-timed, the
English language is stress-timed
M ethod of w riting this p ap er
To complete this paper, I will use secondary
evidence from previous research as well as
my first-hand experience of teaching English
as a foreign language
Problem s w ith vowels
Firstly, I will briefly describe some aspects
that relate to the term vowel Celce-Murcia
and Larsen-Freeman (1996) offered two
definitions of vowels The first definition for
vowels is “the tools of poets” as vowels allow
poets to create assonance and rhythm Thus,
vowels help shape language musically and
make it pleasing to the ear For the second
definition, these authors defined that, “vowels
are the core or peak of the syllable” (p 93)
Secondly, I wish to provide some
information about Vietnamese vowels As
Honey stated, “the highly complex Vietnamese
vowel system possesses eleven pure vowels
and many more diphthongs and tripthongs”
As a Vietnamese native speaker, I understand that those pure vowels are as follows: /a/, /ă/, /â/, /o/, /ô/, /ơ/, /e/, /ê/, /u/, /ư/, and /i/ In general, most of Vietnamese vowels are free
of positions, which mean that they can stand alone Some, however, cannot People can usually recognize Vietnamese diphthongs and trip-thongs by the spelling (p 239)
So, according to Honey, there are some similarities between the two vowel systems The Vietnamese language often caries alternatives to the closest pure vowel in pronouncing the pure vowel in English, such as: lo /lô/ for low and me/mê/ for may People can only distinguish some pairs of Vietnamese diphthongs by the length of the constituent vowels, such as may /mai/ meaning to sew and mai /ma-i/ meaning tomorrow (p 240)
As a result, by replacing and pronouncing English in that way, Vietnamese speakers face
a large number of problems when speaking in English
Another important factor in vowel section that causes problems for Vietnamese speakers is the confusion between the tense and lax vowel sounds in English Avery and Ehrlich (1992) pointed out that, “the distinction between tense and lax vowel pairs
o f English almost always creates problems” (p 96) Vietnamese learners of English cannot pronounce the two vowels of each pair correctly These authors figured out that second language learners could pronounce
“neither the tense nor the lax vowel, but a vowel between the two Failure to make these distinctions can lead to misunderstandings” (p 96) Avery and Ehrlich also offered an illustration for this problematic phenomenon, such as words like sleep, taste, and stewed
Trang 3When Vietnamese speakers pronounce these
words, English native speakers may hear slip,
text, and stood, instead (p 96)
To finalize this discussion on the problems
of vowels for Vietnamese people in learning
English, I would like to describe my own
experiences in learning and teaching English
as a foreign language for several years, in
order to describe specific problems For many
years of learning English, I faced difficulties
in pronouncing the tense and lax vowels
in English correctly With my experience
of teaching English at a public school in
Vietnam, I realize that most of my students
have problems with a number of vowels, as
follows:
Problem w ith /i:/ versus /I/
While teaching these two sounds to my
students, most of them could not distinguish
the differences between these sounds When
teaching, I took some minimal pair words, such
as “seat” and “sit”, “sheep” and “ship” I tried
to lengthen the /i:/ sound for them to listen,
so that they could recognize the differences
They told me that there was a difference
between them, the pair, due to the /i:/ sound
is longer than /I/ sound However, when the
students practiced pronouncing these sounds,
they pronounced both sound exactly the same
Problem w ith /u :/ versus / /
Similarly to the issue concerning /i:/
and /I/ sounds, my students learned how to
pronounce /u:/ and / / sounds, and they could
distinguish the differences between them
However, in English, there are many words
with ‘oo’ that may be pronounced as neither
/u:/ nor / / This can produce confusion for
Vietnamese learners; as a result, students
projected the same sound for both /u:/ and / /
For example, the word ‘good’ is pronounced
as /g d/ In contrast, the word ‘pool’ is /pu:l/ For the most part, my students vocally could not distinguish the differences between them Therefore, I have concluded that when my students have spoken these types of words, they associate these words as illustrating the same sound
Problem w ith /e/ versus / * / Vietnamese students cannot identify the vowel /e/ and /$ /, such as in bed and bad (Avery and Ehrlich, p 156) The confusion between /e/ and /$ / may be considered as the most serious problem that Vietnamese speakers encounter when they learn to speak English vowels They cannot identify the differences Learners usually make numerous mistakes with these sounds According to Avery and Ehrlich, “ students often pronounce these two vowels in exactly the same way Most commonly, students fail to lower their tongue and jaw far enough in attempting to produce the /$ / sound” (p 99)
Confusion between / / and / / These two sounds are somewhat easier to recognize than the vowel sounds as discussed above However, in some certain instances, they still demonstrate mispronunciation of them For instance, the word ‘love,’ may be pronounced as /l v/ or /l v/
Problem s w ith consonants
To examine the problems that Vietnamese speakers meet when they learn to speak English, I will explain general problems based
on the work of several linguists I shall also point out specific problems based on my own learning and teaching experiences
According to Honey, “the Vietnamese consonant system is very different from that
of the English, and there is considerable variation between dialects Vietnamese
48 TAP SAN K H O A H O C VA D A O TAO
Trang 4learners of English can be expected to come
across particular difficulty with some or all of
the following sounds: /f/, /9/, /0/, /z/, / /, / /, /
/, / /” (p 240)
Vietnamese speakers can pronounce words
with final voiceless stop consonants /p/, /t/ and
/k/, as these voiceless stop consonants occur
at the final position of a word in Vietnamese
However, Vietnamese speakers pronounce
these consonants with extremely short
duration, and therefore, the sounds are never
released at the end position of a word It can
be very difficult for English native speakers to
hear these sounds from Vietnamese speakers
For example, a Vietnamese learner of English
producing the word seat may sound like see
(Avery and Ehrlich, 1992, p 153)
Problem w ith voiced versus voiceless
stops
Vietnamese speakers of English have a
number of problems with the voiced versus
the voiceless stops in word final position,
/b/, /p/, /d/, /g/ vs /p/, /t/, /k/ Based on Avery
and Ehrlich’s statement, “Vietnamese has no
voiced stops at the ends of words” (p 154)
Additionally, Vietnamese learners of English
encounter problems with words final fricative
consonants /f/, /v/, /9/, /0/, /s/, /z/, / / and / /
Vietnamese speakers can pronounce fricatives
such as /f/, /v/ and /s/ at the beginning of
English words However, fricatives do not
occur in word-final position in their mother
tongue Thus, omission of a fricative at the
end of words usually occurs when they speak
English The word ‘beef’ may be pronounced
like /bi:/, month as /m n/, or such as the
following sentence:
The boys always pass the garage on their way
home.
M ay sound like:
The boy alway p a the gara on their way home
(Avery and Ehrlich, p 154)
Being a native speaker of Vietnamese,
I also face many difficulties in pronouncing English consonants During the time I taught English as a foreign language at a secondary school and at a university, I had trouble explaining to my students the difficulties they had In reading books about problems with pronunciation, I gained more knowledge and experiences about English pronunciation I realized that most Vietnamese speakers, even those who are very proficient in English still endure problems with the following English consonants featured in this abstract
Problem between consonant /s/ and /z/ Vietnamese speakers often get confused between /s/ and /z/ They replace /s/ for /z/,
so that a word such as peas is pronounced
as peace In conversational situations, the /s/ sound may present two types of problem The first problem is that in the spelling of some words, the /s/ sound is omitted For example, the word because is often pronounced as /bik / The second problem that many speakers encounter is the redundancy of the /s/ sound
As mentioned above, the /s/ and /z/ sounds do not occur at the final position in Vietnamese words, but for English words, they do Consequently, when speaking, Vietnamese learners of English are over aware of these sounds and the over-awareness leads them
to make pronunciation mistakes Vietnamese often add the /s/ sound in both adjectives and non count nouns For example, instead of saying very good, many speakers say very goods, and a lot of money turns out sounding like a lot of moneys
Problem w ith /0/ and /6/
Vietnamese speakers often create a heavily
Trang 5voiceless stop /t/ instead of a voiceless
fricative /9/ in a word like thank Apparently,
they vocalize the sound /t/ based on their
language since in Vietnamese the letter th
is combined by a heavily aspirated /t/ So,
the word three can be pronounced exactly
like tree Vietnamese learners of English
commonly produce /d/ or /z/ for /5/ sounds, so
the word than may sound like /d ^ n / or /z ^ n /
(Avery and Ehrlich, 1992, p 155)
Problem w ith w ord-final / /
When Vietnamese speakers learn how to
produce the voiceless fricative / / in word-
final positions, they may produce this sound
as / / For example, the word ‘m arch’ may
sound like /ma / (Avery and Ehrlich, 1992, p
155)
Problem w ith /p/ vs /f/ and /b/:
In Vietnamese language, the voiceless stop
/p/ does not occur in initial places o f words
As such, Vietnamese speakers can substitute
a voiced stop /b/ or a voiceless fricative /f/
for /p/ Examples of this are that the word
pool may sound like fool, and pop may sound
like bop In contrast, in the final positions,
these consonants often provoke confusion for
learners For example, lab might sound like
lap (Avery and Ehrlich, 1992, p 155)
Problem w ith liquid /l/ and nasal /n/
In Vietnamese language, these two sounds
exist However, people in many parts of
Vietnam, especially for those who live in
the north of Vietnam cannot distinguish the
differences between them in their mother
tongue They usually find themselves confused
between the /n/ sound and /l/ sound Thus,
when they speak English, they always make
mistakes with these sounds One example of
this is that they say /lOw/ for the word no or
/lain/ for nine, or they may say /snOwni/ for
the word ‘slowly’
C onsonant clusters According to Avery and Ehrlich
“Vietnamese has no consonant clusters in initial or final position” (p 155) Therefore, many English consonants do not appear in Vietnamese, which can lead Vietnamese students to make mistakes when they speak English Avery and Ehrlich also said that,
“Vietnamese students tend to omit one or more consonants from a difficult cluster” (p 155) The most common mistake is the deletion of consonant s in the middle of words, for example, they say /^ b ^ k / for abstract (Honey, p 240)
Problem w ith gram m atical ending s When words end in s in forms of consonant- vowel-consonant, the /s/ sound is frequently omitted For examples, sits may turn to /sIt/ and wants may become /wan/ Sometimes, Vietnamese speakers tend to omit both /t/ and /s/ sound in the word wants As, Nguyen (2007) stated, “clusters ending with voiceless /s/ and /t/ cause quite lot of problems for informants” (p 23)
Some other final consonant clusters such
as /kt/ as in walked, / t/ as in washed, / d/ as in judged, and /ld/ as in filled are very difficult for Vietnamese learners to pronounce According
to Nguyen (2007), “two-consonant cluster that contain /l/ in /lz/, /lt/, /ld/, or /lf/ are observed to be really difficult for all speakers since the sound itself never appears in the first language” (p 22) For instance, the words world may be pronounced as /w /, m yself may
be pronounced as /mayse/ These mistakes can be very difficult for Vietnamese learners
to overcome
W ord stress and tones Ngo, a Vietnamese lecturer at Harvard
50 TAP SAN K H O A H O C VA D A O TAO
Trang 6University claimed that “Vietnamese is a tonal
language in which changes of the pitch level
and/or contour signal changes in meaning”
(p 7) He also mentioned that Vietnamese
is syllable-timed language, and English is
stress-timed language (p.7) In syllable-
timed language, each syllable is given the
same amount of time pronounced about the
same length, but in stress-timed language,
the stress syllables come at regular intervals
Consequently, Vietnamese learners have
problems with timing of stressed words
Vietnamese speakers are not able to
vocalize stress by tone in English words
due to syllabic tone (Honey, p 241) They
articulate every individual syllable with
its characteristic tonal pattern, and without
tonal pattern, listeners cannot recognize the
differences between Vietnamese words In
addition, in compound words that consist of
two or more syllabic units, each syllable keeps
its own characteristic tone Whereas, the word
stresses in English occur variously The stress
may appear in the first, the second, the third or
the fourth syllable of words The word record
may have the stress on the first (if it functions
as a noun) or second syllable (if it functions as
a verb) Consequently, Vietnamese speakers
o f English meet difficulties with word stress
In conclusion
Vietnamese speakers come across various
difficulties in learning English pronunciation
The complications of vowels, particularly
between tense and lax vowels in English can
be tough to learn In addition, the differences
between consonant positions, consonant
clusters, word and tones lead Vietnamese
students of English to meet a large number of
difficulties As a result, Vietnamese speakers
often come across pronunciation problems
when communicating in English
References Avery, & Ehrlich (1992) Teaching American English pronunciation Oxford:
University Press
Celce-Murcia, M., & Brinton, D M., &
Goodwin (1996) Teaching pronunciation: A
reference fo r teachers o f English to speakers
o f other languages Cambridge University
Press
Honey P J (1987) Vietnamese speakers
In M Swan & B Smith, Learner English:
A teacher’s guide to interference and other problems (1st ed., pp 243-248) London:
Cambridge University Press
Nation, I S P., & Newton, J (2009) Teaching
ESL/EFL listening and speaking New York:
Routledge, Taylor and Francis
Ngo, B N (2001) The Vietnamese language
learning framework Part one: Linguistics Retrieved April 20, 2010 from: http://
www.sea site.niu.edu/jsealt/past% 20issues/ volume%2010/VN%20Part%20%20I.pdf